Member-only story
Why Literary Agents Take FOREVER to respond to query letters
When I was an editorial assistant, my roommate Jackie worked as an assistant at a literary agency.
Our jobs were pretty similar. We tackled administrative tasks, occasionally grabbed coffee for our bosses, and spent most weeknights reading.
The difference was what and how we read.
I would read fat novels and 60-page proposals at our dining table, making notes so I could tell my boss exactly what I thought about each project.
Jackie would lay on the couch with a stack of pages, allowing most to drift to the floor where they would accumulate until she finished the stack.
One or two of these pages would end up placed on our coffee table.
When she was finished, Jackie would collect all the pages on the floor and clip them together with a fat binder clip.
She’d put the pages from the coffee table in her notebook.
If you haven’t guessed it already, Jackie was reviewing query letters. What didn’t pass muster ended up on the floor. Every author in the binder clip was sent a form rejection by an intern. The lucky few that ended up in her notebook were asked to send more.
